Denver City Council members are scrutinizing old contracts and questioning other claims by the National Western Stock Show in its effort to relocate from Denver to a new site in Aurora.

Meanwhile, Denver Auditor Dennis Gallagher on Wednesday issued the strongest admonishment of any Denver elected official to a possible relocation, saying in a news release: “It will not happen on my watch.”

Gallagher’s comments highlight what appears to be a growing divide between forces who want the stock show to remain at its current location and those who hope to see it relocate to a larger expanse near Denver International Airport.

On Monday, a City Council committee met for the second time in a month, poring over a 1990 contract between the stock show and the city that was drawn up after voters approved the sale of $30 million in bonds to make improvements and keep the Denver institution put. At the time, officials were considering a move to Texas.

The contract said the stock show must provide the city annual, audited financial reports. It was also required to maintain the upkeep of the facilities.

Breach of contract?

But council members say a recent tour of the facilities revealed dilapidated and unsafe buildings.

“How do you adjudicate the difference between the stock show saying, ‘We’ve done everything we can,’ or us saying, ‘The buildings are in terrible shape and you’ve failed to live up to your end of the bargain?’ ” asked the council’s president, Chris Nevitt.

“If this was not an agreement between friends, would that not look like breach of contract?” he asked.

Gallagher’s office also said the stock show had failed to submit the annual reports for 18 years.

But Wednesday, stock show officials personally delivered the documents to the auditor’s office and said the reports had been dutifully made every year to the city’s Theatres and Arenas department.

Stock show officials say the Denver site near Interstate 70 and Brighton Boulevard is too small and that the buildings are too decrepit and outdated for the show to remain competitive.

The proposal would move the stock show next to a proposed 1,500-room Gaylord Entertainment hotel and convention-center complex near DIA in a complicated and heavily subsidized deal that also could require Denver voters to approve a $150 million bond sale to help finance it.

The deal also would need the agreement of elected officials in Aurora and Denver, where the stock show still has 29 years on its lease.

“I am very concerned that there is a push to precipitously make a move, any move, without regard to the consequences,” Gallagher said. ” . . . I am very concerned that the ‘stock show horses’ are operating with blinders on — that there only seems to be one ‘view’ for the future, and that is to move to Aurora.”

Grant “taken aback”

Gallagher, who was re-elected in May to his third and final term, has no direct authority over the move but is clearly using his bully pulpit.

“I was taken aback by the strength of his comments,” said former National Western Stock Show President Pat Grant. “I have offered to meet with him on Monday. I want to make sure he has the facts and information as to the challenges we are facing and have faced for years.”

Other elected Denver officials, so far, have not been so vocally opposed.

New Mayor Michael Hancock has pledged to work out a “win-win-win solution” acceptable to Denver, Aurora and the National Western. He has convened a task force that meets nearly every week to discuss the issue.

Meanwhile, in Aurora, the City Council voted unanimously Monday to designate 125 vacant acres near DIA as “blighted” — a move to offer Nashville, Tenn.-based Gaylord about $100 million in property-tax breaks to build its hotel and entertainment complex adjacent to a relocated stock show.

Aurora’s land designation is part of an overall incentive package valued at $300 million the city has offered the company.

Gallagher dismissed the “regionalism” philosophy when it comes to moving the stock show, saying no one paid attention to that principle when a move to Commerce City also was among the options being discussed.

“The deal was nixed in favor of the site in Aurora in order to provide even more monetary benefit to Gaylord — to line the pockets of a large corporation with even more taxpayer dollars,” he said in the statement.

“Do I sound angry? You’re damn right I am. I refuse to see our city, our downtown business, our convention center, our historical heritage and the welfare of Denver taxpayers sold down the river because of overarching greed.”

Grant said every effort was made to make the Commerce City move work. But Commerce City could not reach an agreement with Gaylord. And Forest City, owner of the Stapleton property where the stock show would sit in a Commerce City deal, did not offer the land, Grant said.

Jeremy P. Meyer was a reporter and editorial writer with The Denver Post until 2016. He worked at a variety of weeklies in Washington state before going to the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin as sports writer and then copy editor. He moved to the Yakima Herald-Republic as a feature writer, then to The Gazette in Colorado Springs as news reporter before landing at The Post. He covered Aurora, the environment, K-12 education, Denver city hall and eventually moved to the editorial page as a writer and columnist.

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